Objectively, this book was ok. The pace was fine, the setting was interesting, and the themes, current yet timeless. But I think, from a purely technical perspective, the execution was kinda weak.

When I read a dual, or like in this case, a multi POV story, I expect to actually get multiple points of view. But even though The Season featured characters from many different nationalities and backgrounds, except for a handful of sentences in French and even fewer examples of Kiwi lingo, they all used the same vernacular and descriptions. Sometimes, I forgot whose POV I was reading because all the characters shared the same voice. Down to even the American using "petrol" instead of "gasoline" or "gas". Everything was all "white-outs" and fire or heat rushing places. There was no uniqueness to their perspectives.

And is what was with all the "yah"s? I expected that to be a regional accent thing reserved to some of the characters but every single one of them used it. In the whole entire novel, there was one single use of the spelling "yeah"—I actually looked it up. Is "yah" like snow-sports people speak? In my head, I continually heard it in a valley-girl nasally voice and it got super annoying. Navel was also misspelled on both instances it came up.

Technicalities aside, I was surprised by how mature all the characters were. Their ages ranged from 18/19 to 22-ish, and yet they were all a lot more grown up and emotionally intelligent than I've come to expect from such young characters. It was nice, but maybe not overly realistic. Lily, Antione and Liam, the ones with the more affluent upbringings, struggled with similar demons when it came to the expectations of overbearing parents. Eddie felt like the black sheep of his family, Matty was dealing with some serious PTSD, and Seth had a very complicated spiderweb of feelings tied to the resentment of having been forced to grow up to take care of his baby siblings at a young age, fear of abandonment and other needs and wants related to his asexual/panromantic orientation.

And speaking of sexual orientations, is the snowboard world really as homophobic as this book portrayed it to be? When was this story supposed to take place? The 2020s have consisted of rainbow flags everywhere, all the time. Would anyone actually have given even a single fuck about an Olympian coming out as bi? I understand how someone would be temporarily shocked and bewildered to find himself sexually attracted to a guy when he thought he was straight, plus the age thing, but the rest of it felt like a stretch. Realistically, he would have probably received a bunch more sponsorships and magazines covers if he'd come out.

I'm not sure if this series is supposed to be a duet or if more books are planned—I did a quick Google search and found nothing—but since there wasn't much progress in the relationship(s) development (Lily has talked a lot with the guys, but not really gotten to know them), at least I wish we'd delved deeper into the baggage of each of the characters. For an average-length book, I feel like we've barely scratched the surface and were left with zero resolution on anything. except maybe the drama between Liam and Antoine.

And, as someone who was born and raised in a city known for its international ski resort, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that it's not only New Zealand and Australia that have ski resorts in the Southern Hemisphere. Chile and Argentina have plenty of them, too, and I've personally known people who've gone to the US for the offseason, so it was weird to me how every character in this book (even the very background ones) was either American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander or French. Even if we're talking Alps region, plenty more nationalities could have been included.

Anyway, at least I had some fun with the mood board.